Good Things
by passionatetimes
Summary: Picard and Crusher discuss the future. Post ep for "All Good Things"


"Picard to Crusher."

Beverly Crusher had been sleeping soundly when her com chirped and she immediately woke to respond, all her years as a physician having trained her well.

"Crusher here," she responded automatically, sitting up in her bed, ready to take action.

"Do you have a moment, Doctor?" a deep baritone answered. She could hear a hint of hesitation in her captain's voice.

"Of course," she replied, already fully awake and reaching for the pink silk robe at the foot of her bed.

"I'm almost to your quarters now," he replied.

Less than five minutes later, the two of them were sitting on her couch, herbal tea in hand, Beverly's legs tucked up under her leaning slightly toward Picard. A note of concern flitted across her face.

"You're worrying me, Jean-Luc," she said, using the tea to calm the jitters in her stomach. It wasn't often Jean-Luc came to her in the middle of the night. "Are you ill?"

He smiled at her, reassuringly laying a hand on her on her shoulder. "I had a visit from Q."

Beverly's posture immediately straightened at the mentioned of the omnipotent trouble maker's name. "What did he want?"

"To tell us that we were still on trial," Picard replied, savoring the sip of Early Gray as it lingered in his mouth. "That the last seven years had been a test and that we'd failed. First I was in the past and then the future and even here in the present…trying to save humanity."

"In the present?" she questioned, trying to make sense of what he was saying, although there was generally very little sense in anything that had to do with Q.

"An alternate present. A time reset by Q back to the moments before I'd begun shifting through time… I've already sent a request for a senior staff meeting first thing in the morning. I guess I just wanted some time to digest this myself first. And I guess I needed a sounding board."

"I'm always here, Jean-Luc," she said smiling, knowing that her unique friendship with the captain had him often seeking her counsel on more personal matters.

He leaned into her space just a little more, almost intimately. "It was…quite an experience, moving through time, experiencing the past in retrospect and seeing a future very different from the one I had expected."

Beverly reached out and laid her hand over his arm on the back of the couch, the material of his robe, soft to the touch.

"In the past, everything was the same as the first time I stepped foot on the Enterprise. Tasha was there, bright and eager, so full of life," he said wistfully of the security officer they'd lost in the line of duty not long after they'd first begun their mission on the Enterprise. "Then in the future…we'd all gone our separate ways. Geordi became an author with a wife and kids, Data teaching at university, Worf became a member of the Klingon High Council, Will, an admiral…and Deanna had died, causing a rift between Worf and Will."

Picard stopped, letting his words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. He looked at Beverly, giving himself that moment to acknowledge for the millionth time how beautiful she was and how much of his life had spent loving her, mostly in secret.

Beverly ran her hand down his arm, to squeeze his hand, intertwining their fingers.

Encouraged, he continued, "I had been diagnosed with Irumadic Syndrome, slowly losing whatever mental faculties still afforded to me in my advanced age, spending my days tending to grapevines. Angry at the lot I'd drawn and at what I'd become. It was as real to me as it is sitting here with you right now."

She looked at him sympathetically and cursed Q once again for the games he played.

"…You became the captain of a medical ship," he added with a smile. "Captain of the USS Pasteur." Beverly's eyebrow arched and she smiled coyly.

"Hmm, now that's interesting," she replied. "Captain Beverly Crusher, I like the sound of that."

Picard couldn't help but return her smile. "Not quite."

"Not quite what?" she teased, still holding onto his hand.

"Not Captain Beverly Crusher," he answered, watching her intently. "You'd gotten remarried and taken your husband's name."

She waited just a moment and then answered the question lingering in the air, "Let me guess, Captain Beverly Picard?"

Picard smiled again and nodded.

"Makes sense," she answered matter of factly.

"It does?" he asked curiously.

"Yes," she answered, leaned over and her lips lightly brushing against his. "It would only be you."

Picard felt a welling in his chest. He put the hand that he was holding to his lips, never breaking eye contact. _Oui mon amour._

"There's something else," she said, knowing when he was holding something back.

"We were…divorced, in that timeline," he said almost ashamedly. "We were…"

Beverly saw the pain in his eyes, feeling it in her heart.

"Do you know why?" she asked, trying to keep her emotions out of her voice.

"No, just that we still loved each other, but that we obviously couldn't make it work, and we had completely fallen out of each other's lives," he replied, finally looking deep into her eyes. Beverly leaned forward and kissed him again, only this time, it was more like the kiss he'd experienced from the other timeline in his ready room.

"You're stuck with me," she whispered, her forehead on his. "…and I can't imagine my life without you in it."

"I can think of nothing better," he said, her breath on his face.

Beverly leaned into his side and Picard's arm draped over her shoulder. Theirs was an intimacy born of years of friendship and attraction, trust and tragedy and most of all love. He was thankful for the future Q gave him a glimpse of and felt a renewed energy that one day this beautiful woman in his arms would be his wife and that he'd do everything in his power to be the man she deserved.


End file.
